The publicity-shy Dutch businessman behind Cillit Bang bleach and Clearasil spot cream was the highest-paid director of a FTSE 100 company last year after taking home a pay package totalling £36.8m in salary, bonus and share-based payouts. The boss of household goods group Reckitt Benckiser has pocketed more than £80m over the past three years.

A notorious workaholic who rarely gives interviews, he lives in a mansion overlooking a prestigious golf course in Sunningdale, Berkshire.

Behind Becht's income is a record of delivering profits consistently ahead of rivals such as Unilever and Procter & Gamble, although Reckitt shares declined last year and investors have pressed for his rewards to be curbed.

Another feature of Becht's deal is its generosity in relation to those of his colleagues: the £36.8m he took home last year accounts for 84% of the company's entire boardroom remuneration and is equivalent to 5.7% of the total wage bill for Reckitt's 24,300 strong workforce.

Despite fears Reckitt would lose sales for its premium-priced brands as the global downturn set in, Becht has continued to beat growth targets. The performance gap between Reckitt and the rest of the sector has widened, triggering a 65% leap in Becht's pay package for 2008, a year when the company reported a 25% rise in net revenues to £6.56bn.

Becht rarely gives interviews, but said several years ago: "A high profile normally goes with taking the credit and that would send the wrong messages. This is not a one-man show."

Aidan Heavey

Tullow Oil's chief executive and founder, Aidan Heavey, may need some help managing the £28.8m he made last year. A former financial controller for Aer Lingus, he once admitted that he was a "crap accountant".

Heavey joined Tullow Engineering in 1981, a small family-owned firm based near Dublin. The firm had a subsidiary, Tullow Oil, running fuel oil tankers. Heavey decided to buy out the subsidiary, relaunching the company in 1985 as an oil-producing company with horizons far beyond the shores of Ireland.

He got the idea after being tipped off by a banker who told him that the world was littered with valuable oil fields that were ignored by big companies because they were too small. Heavey plumped for Senegal to base his new venture, even though he was not entirely sure where it was.

He mortgaged himself up to the hilt and sold his collection of vintage cars to raise the cash for the new company. Today, Tullow Oil has a market valuation of $13bn (£7.8bn), is a member of the FTSE 100 and is the largest independent oil company in Britain. It operates in 22 countries.

Tullow Oil's big gamble came in 2004 when it bought Energy Africa. The deal doubled the company's size and gave it a large presence in Africa.

Tullow's results last year were as spectacular as Heavey's bulging pay packet. He cashed in £24m in share options and received £3m in awards vesting under the company's share-based long-term incentive plan, as well as his £640,500 basic salary. Last year the company made a pre-tax profit of £299m, up 162% on the previous year, helped by a record oil price. Profits for the first half of this year were predictably much more modest after a collapse in the oil price. But the firm maintained its dividend. Heavey still owns 0.8% of Tullow Oil, worth more than $100m.

Charles Goodyear

Like comedy, one secret to making a fortune is timing. And by judging his departure as the chief executive of BHP Billiton, the world's biggest mining company, to perfection, Charles Goodyear hit the jackpot last year. Goodyear, better known as Chip, banked £23.8m when he retired early, triggering his pension, and allowing him to cash in on long term incentive plans and share options, on top of his base salary of £3.7m.

What makes Goodyear's departure especially astute is that after his exit, the fortunes of BHP Billiton, which he had built up, went into reverse. When he left, BHP was riding high on the back of surging commodity prices driven by demand from China. But the market subsequently fell sharply as would Goodyear's fortune if he stayed at the firm.

Goodyear quietly surfed the global commodity boom, which saw his company's profits and shares rocket. His term of office saw him regularly scoop 20% pay rises. But the scion of US lumber and rubber barons faced disputes with workers who took action when they were offered pay rises of just 1.5%.

A keep fit fanatic, Goodyear left BHP to work at the powerful Singapore sovereign wealth fund, Temasek, where it was assumed he was being groomed to be its first foreign chief executive. His brief was to restore the fund's fortunes after it was hit by the financial crisis but disagreements over strategy led to him quitting in July.

After studying at Yale and then Wharton business school, Goodyear became a Wall Street investment banker with Kidder Peabody. He moved into mining with a job at copper producer Freeport-McMoRan, and joined Australian miner BHP as chief financial officer in 1999. Goodyear was one of the team that spearheaded BHP's merger with Billiton of South Africa in 2001.

Goodyear's tenure at BHP Billiton was bookended by the shadow of industry rival Rio Tinto. It was his predecessor, Brian Gilbertson's inability to convince BHP chairman, Don Argus to mount a bid for Rio which sparked a dramatic boardroom bust up that created the opportunity for Goodyear to run the firm. And it was Goodyear's departure that allowed his prodigy and successsor, Marius Kloppers to persuade Argus to press the button on an ill-advised failed £73bn tie up that failed